After two years of intense courtship, progressing from warm words to vital weapons, summits in Pyongyang to 11,000 soldiers on the ground in Russia, the burgeoning relationship between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un was signed in blood this week when the first stories emerged of North Korean casualties on the Ukrainian battlefield.
On Monday, the GUR, Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, claimed that 30 North Koreans had been killed or wounded in fighting around the villages of Plekhovo, Vorobzha and Martynovka in the Kursk region – a figure echoed by a spokesman for the US National Security Council. On Thursday, Lee Sung-kwon, a South Korean MP who had been briefed by his country’s intelligence services, claimed that at least 100 North Korean soldiers had been killed in total, with a further 1,000 injured.
These reports are difficult to verify given the nature of the battlefield and the agenda of those involved. Neither Moscow nor Pyongyang will admit to the deployment of North Korean troops in the war against Ukraine, let alone to any casualties. However, the first combat operations by Korean troops since the Vietnam War are already yielding some interesting insights into the military strengths and weaknesses of the renewed alliance, as well as its wider diplomatic risks and opportunities.
70 year old tactics
Many have expressed surprise at the ostensible naivety of the North Korean troops under live fire for the first time. Unverified footage posted on Ukrainian social media shows soldiers of apparent Korean origin (although Russia’s Asian minorities also serve in its armed forces) attempting to hide behind trees in open, snowy fields while being mercilessly hunted by drones. A Facebook post by the 8th Special Forces regiment boasted of their “warm welcome for North Korean troops”.
“They don’t understand what’s happening,” one Ukrainian drone commander told The Washington Post. “We were very surprised, we had never seen anything like it – forty to fifty people running across a field. That’s a perfect target for artillery and Mavic [drone] operators. Russians never ran like that.”
Another drone operator in the Kursk region compared the “bizarre” experience to “playing a computer simulator on easy mode”, while a Ukrainian officer said the North Koreans were using the “same tactics as 70 years ago”.
Mark Cancian, a former colonel in the US Marine Corps and now a senior adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), has also been speaking to Ukrainian officers. “I’m surprised that the North Koreans are being used in small groups,” he says. “If that’s true, they will indeed end up as cannon fodder.”
However, such tactics would not be wholly inconsistent with a Russian strategy that has relied more heavily on numerical advantage than innovation over the past two years. “Russia has long been deploying its elite forces as infantry in frontal assaults,” says Christina Harward, a Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “It’s unlikely that Russia would deploy North Korean forces any differently.”
Language barrier
It is also possible that the Russians felt they had little choice given the short period between the untested North Korean troops being waved off in a special ceremony by Kim in October and their call-up on the battlefield only two months later. Armed with false documents identifying them as Buryats, an Asian people from Siberia, one hundred words of rudimentary Russian and some hasty training in trench clearing, the Koreans appear far from ready for a battle-hardened Ukrainian enemy.
This impression has been strengthened by testimony from North Korean defectors, one of whom told Radio Free Europe this week that he agreed with the Ukrainian assessment that North Korean troops could suffer casualty rates of up to 90 per cent.
These casualties are likely to be exacerbated by the linguistic and operational challenges of a multinational deployment. Cancian was surprised to learn that the North Koreans are apparently being merged with Russian troops. “In the First World War, the USA insisted on their units operating together – and not being dispersed along the front, as the French wanted,” he says. “It’s hard enough to get the Americans and the Brits to understand each other and they have a common language. Russian and Korean are very different. It may be that the Russians do not have a great deal of confidence in the North Korean commanders.”
According to the GUR, it was this language barrier which led to a recent “friendly fire” incident in which eight Chechen soldiers were killed by North Korean soldiers. The South Korean intelligence services believe that “expendable” North Korean units are viewed as “more of a burden than an asset” by their Russian allies.
Elite Storm Corps
However, others strike a cautionary note about jumping to conclusions on the basis of limited battlefield contact.
“We don’t have enough information to assess the effectiveness of the Korean People’s Army’s integration with Russian forces in Kursk,” says Michael Madden, a North Korea expert at the Stimson Center in Washington. “We have heard the ‘cannon fodder’ talking point even before North Korean forces were in the theatre of operations. Measuring their effectiveness will take a bit more time. While the Ukrainians can lay claim to a North Korean body count, it is the first innings in Russia retaking Kursk.”
Similarly, Harward points out that Russian milbloggers have “claimed that the North Korean forces were able to seize settlements incredibly fast in Kursk Oblast” – although this is “likely part of information operations aimed at intimidating Ukrainian forces”.
There is also a risk of underestimating North Korean troops from the elite Storm Corps, a unit whose training includes breaking lightbulbs with their bare hands and clubbing their comrades’ shirtless torsos with wooden sticks.
“By and large, these are highly trained and highly indoctrinated troops,” says Madden. “They come from military units which are fully supplied in terms of food, clothing and equipment.”
Men in return for missile technology
So how might this military alliance play out in the long term?
“Allies inevitably get grumpy with each other, so there will be a political dimension, especially if the casualties start getting high,” says Cancian. “That may drive some adaptations, such as more training for the North Koreans or operating as complete units.”
Madden points out that this is only the first phase in North Korean-Russian cooperation. “Casualties might present short-term setbacks, but over the medium and long-term, this will bolster the relationship.”
Military might: With 1.3 million conscripts and 7.6 million reservists, North Korea is amply resourced to help Russia in future stages of the war – AP
If needs be, there is no shortage of North Korean troops in a country with 1.3 million conscripts and 7.6 million reservists – even if Madden believes that it will be at least a year before Pyongyang increases its deployment. According to Ukrainian officials, a second battalion of North Korean troops has gathered in Russia’s neighbouring Belgorod region, potentially in preparation for an assault on Kharkiv.
“We cannot rule out the likelihood that additional troops will be deployed from other divisions,” says Dr Edward Howell, a lecturer in politics at Oxford University and the Korea Foundation Fellow at Chatham House. “If Russia has pledged to provide North Korea with advanced military and missile technology, as well as knowhow, in response for North Korea going ‘all in’ and sending manpower, then North Korea is likely to continue to deploy troops in order to reap these benefits, and ask Putin for more substantial concessions.”
The concessions already wrung out of Moscow reveals the extent to which these 11,000 North Korean soldiers are simply pawns in a wider geo-political war. Kim has shipped 20,000 containers of weapons to Russia, earning up to $5.5 billion for a country hit by American sanctions. Meanwhile, his provision of boots on the ground could bring in another $572 million per year in payments, shoring up his domestic position and giving his surviving soldiers 21st-century combat experience. The Russian alliance also offers the potential to develop his nuclear weapon capability.
Similarly, a Russian government which has suffered an estimated 600,000 casualties in two years might be able to avoid another unpopular call-up of its reserves thanks to Korean reinforcements.
A special relationship signed in blood: Kim Jong-Un’s provision of 11,000 boots on the ground to President Putin could bring in $572 million per year in payments to North Korea – Reuters
According to Dr Howell’s recent paper for Chatham House, this mutual benefit is reinforced by two states seeking to “undermine and erode the institutions and legitimacy of the US-led international order”.
While the partnership is helping Russia as long as the Ukraine War continues, it is more beneficial, he argues, to North Korea in the longer term. “Pyongyang now has the unwavering support of Moscow at the UN Security Council, which has been reduced to its most sclerotic since the institution’s inception in 1945,” he explains.
Luring defectors
However, the strengthening of the Russian-North Korean axis does provide two silver linings for Ukraine’s supporters. One is that the news of North Korea’s participation had already prompted NATO to provide more military aid to Ukraine. The other is that the Ukrainians have quickly spotted the propaganda value of denigrating the North Koreans as “mercenaries” mistreated by their Russian masters. This week, President Zelenskyy said that there was “not a single reason for North Koreans to die in this war”, posting an unverified video on X of Russian soldiers apparently burning the faces of dead North Korean soldiers in a bid to hide their identities.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian “I Want to Live” project, which attempts to lure Russian soldiers into defecting, has taken to posting Korean-language videos promising “three hot meals a day” for North Korean defectors.
“There are some very powerful opportunities,” says Cancian. “North Korean prisoners of war are likely to say some embarrassing things when removed from the propaganda bubble they have lived in all their lives. They might even manage to arrange some defectors to South Korea.”
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